One measure of the health of general aviation is the activity within the avionics sector—involving both forward-fit (factory installations) and retrofit sales. The Aircraft Electronics Association (AEA) released its Third Quarter Market Report Monday (Nov. 6) and the results are encouraging.
Overall sales for the July-September time frame were up by 9.9 percent compared with Q3 2022, though sales figures were down slightly (1.1 percent) compared with Q2 this year. But at better than $814 million, 2023’s Q3 sales mark the second-highest tally in history for the time period.
Year-to-date sales at the end of September totaled more than $2.4 billion. Of that number, $982.8 million were retrofit sales compared with $1.4 billion in forward-fit revenues. The YTD figures for the end of Q3 this year represent a 15.9 percent increase in the same time frame last year. And the association noted that forward-fit sales exceeded $400 million in each of the first three quarters of 2023 for the first time in the history of the report.
The YTD sales figures for retrofit and forward-fit categories represent 40.7 percent and 59.3 percent of the total, respectively.
